My Blossom

Why did you found your start-up, what problem are you addressing and how are you solving it?

A few years ago I was trying to recover from an operation and was looking for an app that offered me yoga and meditation that could support my healing process. At that time, you could find this kind of content mainly on YouTube, there were already some meditation apps - but their content was all in English - and none of them were customizable to my personal needs. At that point, Ralph and I had already gained several years of experience in developing and managing digital products at a major German media company. So we decided to test whether a holistic self-care app based on your personal healing needs would appeal to potential users.

Our first test campaign on Facebook and Instagram showed that there was an overwhelmingly high interest, especially from female target groups, for such a holistic approach - and it showed that these target groups also had a high interest in healthy eating and mindfulness in general. That's why we developed our MVP as a holistic self-care app with +100 premium programs based on the emotions of our users.

What is special about your business model, what do you do differently?

Compared to the competition, we offer the full range of self-care: With the My Blossom Premium self-care videos, you can practice yoga and Pilates, in different lengths and for different experience levels, you can meditate indoors and outdoors, you get a wide range of healthy recipes - all based on how you feel today. Our built-in emotion tracker and mindfulness diary allows our users to record their personal state of mind and positive moments on a daily basis, helping them to become more relaxed and content in their everyday lives.

Interested parties can subscribe to My Blossom on a monthly and annual basis with a corresponding discount. And our 7-day trial makes it easy for new users to try My Blossom for free.

Ralph and I had originally planned to launch My Blossom as a freemium product, but switched to full premium shortly before the launch. Personally, I'm delighted with this decision, as our in-life conversion rates have now clearly proven that we've taken the right path.

What were the biggest challenges you had to overcome at the beginning?

After our first successful market test, where there was no MVP yet, I tried to approach a few investors. At the time, I was 6 months pregnant and still working full-time. But with the birth of my son clearly ahead of us, no investor believed we could make it.

That's when I decided to completely bootstrap: 3 months after the birth of my son, we started designing and coding our app, producing our content, building the My Blossom brand and planning our go-to-market. 10 months later, the My Blossom app was ready for launch.

So building My Blossom with no funding, no team behind me and a little baby that I carried with me to every meeting was definitely one of the biggest challenges. Today I am proud that we made it and I am very happy that My Blossom has already helped hundreds of users to find more balance, energy and joy in their lives.

I wish there was a dedicated value for a founder's resilience, perseverance and dedication that we as female, part-time founders and moms could refer to when pitching our startups to investors. As a former manager of quite diverse teams and a mother, I can definitely attest that women who show this level of energy every day are literally able to "move mountains" - and should be a valuable investment target!

What was the most valuable advice someone gave you during your start-up phase?

Definitely when reviewing our initial go-to-market assumptions. Unlike in a big company - which Ralph and I were used to - when you start your own start-up, you don't have a lot of budget to test pricing, subscription logic or campaigns. So we relied on some very open-minded and brilliant ex-founders who shared their knowledge and experience with us. This helped us to make the right decisions shortly before the launch.

What has been your biggest success so far?

Definitely seeing how our funnel works and how our product is used. With only 20,000€ marketing budget we have managed to reach more than 15,000 downloads, 1,500 users have subscribed to My Blossom and our content has been used more than 20,000 times. We also generated some media coverage (Shape, Fit for Fun and Brigitte, to name a few, which are part of our core target audience) and influential people started talking about My Blossom. All of this gave me confidence that My Blossom could potentially become something bigger than "just a self-care app", which is what our MVP is today.

I want My Blossom to be a fulfilling destination for anyone seeking more balance and happiness in their life. The idea behind My Blossom has changed my own life and I want to enable others to feel and live this happiness too.

What are your milestones?

Closing our seed round soon, improving our product & emotion tracking, scaling our marketing, building a team, launching My Blossom at least in more (European) markets, testing and launching our planned coaching platform with real users - and ultimately making more than 1 million users happier and healthier.

What is your next challenge?

Getting enough funding to reach our milestones.

What have you learned so far?

In a positive way, I am learning every day. We have all acquired new skills, put our customers even more in the focus of all our decisions - but we have also learned that a successful MVP deployment, users who love your product, your conversion funnel working and solid 5-year plans do not automatically allow a startup to get easier access to the right funding in Germany. I am currently attending Y Combinator's Start up School (Y Combinator is one of the most successful start up accelerators in the US) and it is very refreshing to learn there that simplifying your messaging will help you maximize your funding opportunities.

What would you recommend to other founders?

• First, go ahead and do it. It's the doing mode where you learn the most.
• Secondly, obstacles are always opportunities. They make your brain more flexible in the search for innovative solutions.
• And last but not least: Build a diverse team with people who complement their skills and strengths, but also with people who share a set of core values.

Where did you meet as a team?

Ralph and I met 10 years ago in a company office outside of Munich, where Ralph applied for a job in my team, which at that time consisted of only 3 people and was facing a big challenge: to deliver the first live sports streaming service to German cell phone users, with a short time-to-market, a small budget and at a time when almost nobody believed that consumers would be willing to watch live games on small screens. So the starting point of our relationship was very similar to the journey we're on now with My Blossom - with the difference that today we're seeing a much faster uptake by consumers when it comes to digital self-care products.

Marc and I were originally friends, later we became partners and co-founders and today we are not only husband and wife but also happy parents. We've both lived, and still live, pretty stressful lives - which is why we encouraged each other early on in our relationship to find balance through yoga, meditation and mindfulness.

What has really gone wrong since you started?

There hasn't been a disaster that we've had to recover from, but there have definitely been a few decisions that I would make differently today. When you're operating on tiny budgets during the bootstrap phase, you tend to try to do everything yourself. This extends the time to market and increases the risk of running into technical dead ends when you need flexibility in scaling your solution. The next time - if ever - I embark on a journey like this, I'll make sure to get the external funding upfront to enable scaling at an earlier stage.

What was the hardest rejection you ever got in a pitch?

Can I quote a sentence I've heard several times? "Nice idea, let me discuss it with my wife". I was relieved to hear that Jessica Alba also heard this phrase several times from investors before her start-up - which is also primarily aimed at female target groups - finally took off.

Where do you see your start-up in 3 years?

Launched in at least 7 more markets, with our self-care approach complemented by our coaching platform, providing both reassuring and value-driven happiness to hundreds of thousands of users.

Do you still have a real social life since founding?

I have had more of a social life as a founding mother than I would have had without my startup. I was blessed with a baby that was easy to carry around and sleep at the right times (e.g. at workshops and content shoots). And when the startup challenges fulfill you, you don't experience it as stress and therefore remain a sociable person for your family and friends.

Do you have a role model and if so, who is it?

Funnily enough, they are not founders, but politicians. It used to be Hillary Clinton when I was younger. I admire women who try to drive change out of the system and don't retreat when they fail. Today it could be Ursula von der Leyen if she succeeds in transforming the EU into a fossil fuel-free continent and opening up to new economic logics and disruptive innovation.

If an investor gave you 500,000 euros, what would you do with the money?

At My Blossom, we have a very clear short, medium and long-term roadmap. 500,000 would allow us to implement our 5-year minimum base plan for our self-care product in DACH. We would split this investment into a budget to improve our back- and front-end, the biggest part to be scalable (which also allows us to invest in marketing) and a small part to hire a small team.

Let's say you were mayor of Munich for a day, what would you change?

If it was just for one day, I would invite the top managers of Munich's big companies to a meeting with the most innovative start-up founders - and discuss how we can help transform Munich into a more digital, innovative city that is committed to a carbon-neutral economy.

Who would you like to have dinner with and why?

Back to the role model I had for many years, Hillary Clinton: Back in high school, I wrote my first thesis on her approach (as First Lady) to changing the healthcare system in the United States. Recently, I had the chance to attend an event where she spoke to a smaller audience and her clear perspective on how our digital economy is intertwined with domestic and some dynamics of international politics always fascinates me. Getting the chance to have a real 1:1 with her would of course be a dream come true.

Who is the mastermind in your team and what is their superpower?

There isn't one single mastermind at My Blossom, it's the combination of our different skillsets, backgrounds and experiences that make us an unbeatable team. And by that I don't just mean the founders, but the entire virtual team we've built of designers, engineers, content producers and marketers - all united in our mission to make people happier in their daily lives.